Troutt's Reef-Pi Build

Jonathan Troutt · Dec 24, 2018

Hmm that’s strange. Well something is amiss. I had to flip the switch in reef pi to turn them on. Well my blues at least whites are not supposed to come on till 10am.

Diamond1 · Dec 24, 2018

Jonathan Troutt said:
Hmm that’s strange. Well something is amiss. I had to flip the switch in reef pi to turn them on. Well my blues at least whites are not supposed to come on till 10am.

What are you using in reef-pi to control the dimming? Auto or Diurnal?

Jonathan Troutt · Dec 24, 2018

Diamond1 said:
What are you using in reef-pi to control the dimming? Auto or Diurnal?

Auto

Diamond1 · Dec 24, 2018

Hmmm... That's weird as long as you have the right pin associated with the timer it should be coming on. The light should start out at 5% due to your settings of having the timer come on at 9 and the light starts ramping to 10% at 8 oclock.

How did you manually turn it on?

Diamond1 · Dec 24, 2018

Do you have a virtual equipment slot for the pin your using on the PCA9865?

Bigtrout · Dec 24, 2018

Jonathan Troutt said:
Yes they are 5730’s I’m pretty sure at least. And they are fed directly from the switch (ulq20003a). If I remember correctly. Each section of the strip has 3 diodes and I used 3 sections so should be 9 leds.

So 3.2V at 130ma=.416watts per led
.416watts times 9 led=3.744 watts

My freshwater led lights use the same 5730 leds and there are 16 on the blue channel. 16 is about right for nightlight brightness on a 75 gallon,
So I think they are running fine, just add nine more!

ScottBrew · Dec 24, 2018

Jonathan Troutt said:
Hmm that’s strange. Well something is amiss. I had to flip the switch in reef pi to turn them on. Well my blues at least whites are not supposed to come on till 10am.

Is the time on the pi correct?

ScottBrew · Dec 24, 2018

Diamond1 said:
The timer looks good to me. The only difference I see in mine is I have the minute set to any (*).

Should have a minute entered, a wildcard (*) means every unit of time, that's why you use * for the day entry for every day. * in the minute box means it's sending a signal to turn on every minute.

Jonathan Troutt · Dec 24, 2018

Bigtrout said:
So 3.2V at 130ma=.416watts per led
.416watts times 9 led=3.744 watts

My freshwater led lights use the same 5730 leds and there are 16 on the blue channel. 16 is about right for nightlight brightness on a 75 gallon,
So I think they are running fine, just add nine more!

This strips runs off of 12v the total current sink of the strip is .130mA

That being said my thought process when like this. I remember reading that the ulq2003a can source 500mA per darlington pair. So I measured current draw from a 12v source for the led strip that I installed. It measured 130mA decided that the darlington could power the moonlight strips.

I am going to be adding another strip to the other light as well and was going to run the moonlight strips in parallel that would mean the darlington pair would be sourcing ~300mA.

Jonathan Troutt · Dec 24, 2018

Bigtrout · Dec 24, 2018

Jonathan Troutt said:
This strips runs off of 12v the total current sink of the strip is .130mA

That being said my thought process when like this. I remember reading that the ulq2003a can source 500mA per darlington pair. So I measured current draw from a 12v source for the led strip that I installed. It measured 130mA decided that the darlington could power the moonlight strips.

I am going to be adding another strip to the other light as well and was going to run the moonlight strips in parallel that would mean the darlington pair would be sourcing ~300mA.

Be careful, each pair can source 500ma, but the whole chip total for all pairs can only source 2.5a and I would not even go that high. You can parallel the pairs to get higher current flows.

Vahanyos · Dec 24, 2018

11 pages and I still don’t know what you’re building haha. It looks cool tho.

Is this like your own apex?

Jonathan Troutt · Dec 24, 2018

Vahanyos said:
11 pages and I still don’t know what you’re building haha. It looks cool tho.

Is this like your own apex?

lol....sorry I need to be a little more organized and descriptive i know..

In essence yes I am building a reef-pi unit which is an aquarium controller
https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/r...-on-raspberry-pi.289256/page-431#post-5503221

So far I built the power module, temp monitoring, and lighting control.
I have 8 outlets, 2 temp probes, and I did a little DIY hacking with my lights. I added a moonlight channel that my lights do not originally come with.

Jonathan Troutt · Dec 24, 2018

Bigtrout said:
Be careful, each pair can source 500ma, but the whole chip total for all pairs can only source 2.5a and I would not even go that high. You can parallel the pairs to get higher current flows.

yes sir I honestly wouldnt want to source 2.5a from that chip. So I am right there with ya on that. Maybe if it had a heatsink.....but alas it does not...

So found out last night that the chips that run LCD screen get hot. So if I am going to want to run the LCD i put in the top of my control box I am going to have to provide some active cooling. Probably going to be adding a small fan to my box to accomplish that.

Jonathan Troutt · Dec 24, 2018

@ScottBrew

Ok so I do not know why my drivers didnt turn on this morning. But i did an experiment just now. I deleted all timers and then facetimed with the wifey and set the timers one minutes ahead of the time it was at the time. Saved and watched my blue channel turn on I also watched the journal log and saw the command come through. Cool timer is working as it should.....

So I went and set up a timer for the white channel but made it my normal turn on time in the morning. Saved and the white channel didnt turn on...... So at this point I went back and changed the white timer to one minute ahead of the time it was at the time, waited the one minute and poof white channel turned on.

why is it not turning on the channel when the timer is set and saved when the channel is supposed to be on?